49, CHURCH STREET

Details

TL 8422-8522 COGGESHALL CHURCH STREET (north-west side)

9/46 No. 49 (formerly 2.5.53 listed as Old Country House)

GV II

House. Circa 1565, altered in C18 and C19. Timber framed, plastered and weatherboarded with some exposed framing, roofed with handmade red plain tiles. Main range of one bay facing SE, with rear stack, and 2-bay crosswing to right, with axial stack of c.1600. Single-storey lean-to extension to rear of main range, roofed with red clay pantiles. 2 storeys. Ground floor, 2 late C19/ early C20 sashes of 4 lights. First floor, 2 early C19 sashes of 12 lights, or replicas. Central C20 6-panel door, the top 2 panels glazed, in early C19 moulded architrave with moulded flat canopy on profiled brackets; one stone step. Underbuilt full-length jetty with exposed bressumer, carved with grotesque beasts and scrolls, and weathered. Above the jetty, exposed close studding, without visible bracing. Beside the 2 first-floor windows mortices indicate the former presence of oriels; it is likely that there were similar oriels below the jetty. The rear elevation is weatherboarded, and has on the first floor one early C19 sash of 3+6 lights. Jowled posts, ledged for the binding beams. A post in the rear wall of the main range is rebated for a former external door. C20 grate in main range. In the front wall of the crosswing, exposed internally, is one of a former pair of flank windows of early glazed type, with 2 moulded mullions and 2 of 3 diamond saddle bars, inserted c.1575. Moulded transverse and axial beams with step stops, some with foliate carving, mostly sand-blasted; plain joists of horizontal section, mostly plastered to the soffits. The right front hearth has ovolo-moulded jambs and depressed arch, stripped back to the brick and sand-blasted. The rear hearth against it is C18/19. The left tiebeam of the main range is chamfered with step stops; the right tiebeam is chamfered with lamb's tongue stops, with one chamfered brace. The right section, although described here as a crosswing, has jowls facing forwards and backwards, one chamfered brace in the same plane, and a mortice visible for another. One beam above the first floor of this part is a later insertion, and has a face-halved and bladed scarf and mortices for missing studs. The roof of the rear bay of the crosswing is original, with high clasped purlins and straight wind-braces; in the rear gable is original wattle and daub infill. The remainder of the roof has been rebuilt in the C17 or early C18 in one continuous range parallel with the street, with pegged apices, clasped purlins, without wind-bracing. This house occupies the site formerly occupied by the entrance bay and service bay of an early C14 aisled hall to the left (no. 47, item 9/39, q.v.); deeds in the possession of the owner indicate that it was part of the same building, The Bull Inn, in the C18. The combination of mouldings, step stops and lamb's tongue stops, and the style of the carved bressumer, permit close dating (See J. McCann, The Introduction of the Lamb's Tongue Stop - some new evidence, Historic Buildings in Essex 2, September 1985, 2-5). It is adjacent to a building of similar date (nos. 51, 53 and 55, item 9/47), and opposite to a building dated 1565 (nos. 52 and 54, item 9/66) and another marginally earlier (no. 1, Albert Place, item 9/19), indicating a local wave of prosperity at that period, when elsewhere in Essex and Suffolk the woollen cloth industry was in decline. RCHM 12.

Listing NGR: TL8517422771

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

116077

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Historic Buildings in Essex in Historic Buildings in Essex, (1985), 2-5

End of official list entry

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